Learn how to create charmingly appealing character art in Illustrator (and a bit of Photoshop) with this guide by design stars onesidezero.

You will learn how to control vector paths to create smooth angles and view the necessary stages to complete a piece of work in Adobe Illustrator. This tutorial demonstrates the stages taken from sketch to vector, covering colour adjustments, depth and composition.

Through learning these basic skills you will be able to create perfect characters that are scalable to any size, and which you can then enhance with finishing touches in Photoshop to achieve a truly eye-catching piece of work.

Step 1
Begin by sketching out some rough ideas for characters: at this stage you don’t need to worry about creating a perfect image, so try to keep your drawings quite simple; making them too complex at this stage will make them much harder to trace later on. Remember, you can always add shadows and details to your artwork at later stages, and can even sketch new parts and ideas on the computer as you go along.

Step 2
When you’re happy with your characters, assemble them in a scene. Don’t worry too much about the exact layout and features; again, you can change these later in Illustrator, once you have scanned your sketch into your computer.

Step 3
When you’ve finished your initial character sketches, scan them at 300dpi and save the image. Using 300dpi means that the images won’t be blurry when you come to use them later.